Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft is continuing a push to get BP PLC dollars for marketing.

ORANGE BEACH — Leaders along the Alabama coast continue to push BP PLC for marketing dollars that would help lure tourists back to the beaches and get people eating Gulf seafood again.

Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft said that money would help deal with the record-setting oil spill’s impact on the coast’s reputation, “the most fragile part of business and the most difficult to recover from.”

To Bayou La Batre Mayor Stan Wright, the Gulf’s oyster industry is a little bit like the California cow, particularly one seen in television commercials promoting “great milk from happy cows.”

He envisions commercials for fresh Gulf Coast oysters, “showing the products and how you cook it” with delighted eaters slurping the oysters down.

The mayor, an oyster processor, said he meets regularly with his fellow seafood industry partners to talk about how to get those promotions started.

And Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon, meanwhile, is trying to form a coalition of elected officials from Panama City to the Louisiana coast in an effort to promote the northern Gulf Coast.

So far there are officials from seven counties in Alabama and Florida involved in the interstate commission.

Speaking by telephone from a meeting in Pensacola this week, Kennon said officials in Florida were experiencing “the same troubles” with regard to Ken Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

Kennon has been outspoken in his criticism of Feinberg, occasionally even taunting the Washington lawyer during public events. The mayor has repeatedly said that he believes Feinberg misunderstands the economics of Alabama’s beachfront community.

Kennon said he wants to reach out to the mayors of Biloxi and Gulfport and eventually as far west as Louisiana.

The bigger the group, Kennon imagines, the stronger the pact.

“British Petroleum’s M.O. has been to divide and conquer,” Kennon said. “And we’re tired of that. We want to discuss and work hard to work together on what we have in common. What we’ve got to understand is that the northern Gulf Coast is a region and we all benefit from each other’s success.”

Last year’s free fall concert series drew October crowds larger than the Baldwin coast has ever seen, officials said. Now Craft and other community leaders want BP to fund one more concert series.

Craft said last week that he and others are negotiating with BP on one “theory that hasn’t been worked out yet.”

That is: Charge admission for a concert series this year, and use the revenue to pay expenses for concerts in 2012, with money from each subsequent concert paying for the next.

“So BP only funds one more year,” Craft said. “The best way for us to change the future claims problem is for them (BP) to give us the money we’ve requested for our marketing and advertising dollars for this spring and summer. If we bring the customers back, then the GCCF problem goes away.”

BP spokesman Justin Saia on Thursday acknowledged working with Alabama officials in support of tourism.

Kennon said flatly “we want an absolute commitment in blood” for marketing money.

Craft said there are plans for events other than concerts, but he declined to comment further about those ideas. 